Home treatment methods for the control and management of various diseases are becoming more popular. For instance, high success rates for treatment of diabetes have been achieved when a diabetic patient controls the disease by self-testing blood glucose levels and administering a correct dose of insulin. The doctor works with the patient to determine the best regimen of diet, exercise, and insulin dose to maintain a target blood glucose level.
Between doctor's office visits, the patient is responsible for carrying out the prescribed regimen, which includes frequent blood testing and insulin administration using a syringe, needleless injector, pen-type injector or insulin pump. The patient and doctor select a blood glucose monitor based on desired monitor features, suitability for the patient, perceived accuracy, and ease of use.
Home diabetes therapy requires personal discipline of the user, is time consuming, requires an appropriate location, and the proper instruments and accessories. Therefore, it is highly desirable that the home therapy regimen cause minimal inconvenience and changes in the patient's lifestyle. Many past therapy regimens and devices have failed to provide the convenience and minimum changes to the patient's lifestyle, and thus the compliance with the medical regimens have been less than satisfactory.
Traditionally, for out-patient and in-home patient care, medication has been injected by a syringe, wherein the user has to insert the needle of the syringe into a separate medication vial to withdraw medication. Once the medication is withdrawn from the vial, the user removes any air bubbles and extra medication, and then injects the medication.
Typical syringes suffer from many drawbacks. For instance, they may not be preloaded with medication; thus, requiring the user to carry a separate medication vial. Moreover, people with dexterity disorders often have difficulty lining up the needle portion of the syringe with the rubber septum on the medication vial. This can lead to unintentional needle pricks or excessive time being required to complete an injection, both of which tend to inhibit compliance with a medical regimen. Also, it is often difficult for children or people with failing eyesight to line up the medication with the proper dosage line on the outer casing of the syringe. Furthermore, the user of the syringe is typically responsible for manually recording the date, the time and the dosage in a separate log book so that the doctor can monitor the user's compliance with the prescribed medical regimen.
Another drawback to the traditional syringe is that a syringe is difficult to use in public places. For instance, many schools do not allow students to carry syringes. This prohibition against syringes can cause excessive delays between injections, and thus could complicate a user's medical condition. Moreover, there is also a social stigma attached to using a syringe, since it raises connotations of drug abuse. These drawbacks have been one of the principal reasons why users have abandoned medical regimens requiring the use of syringes in social settings.
As an alternative, pen-type injectors have been developed. The pen-type injectors often use prepackaged insulin. However, these devices have been inherently inaccurate and undependable due to their difficult to read scales and inadequately designed mechanical injection systems. For example, typical pen-injectors require multiple and repeated activations of the injector mechanism to administer a desired dosage. Thus, during administration of an injection, the user must keep track of the number of activations (i.e., depressions) to determine when the required dosage has been delivered.
Another disadvantage to pen-type injectors is that typical disposable needles used on pen-type injectors cause bleeding during the administration of an injection. This results from the disposable needle spreading the opening in the skin at the injection site, thereby allowing the skin to bleed. This bleeding from traditional disposable needles can discourage users from following the medical regimen, and the bleeding also increases the likelihood of spreading infectious diseases.
Often a user who takes certain medications, such as insulin, in a home therapy regimen must also monitor the level of glucose present in the blood at periodic intervals. The test results are used to determine when another injection should be taken or to determine how the user is responding to prior injections. Typically, the blood monitor is a separate device that the user must carry along with the insulin injector or syringe. To use the blood monitor the user must lance a portion of the body (i.e., typically a finger) and take a sample that is analyzed by the monitor. The user then manually records the results, the time and the date in a separate log book.